Pakistan 'kills 55 terrorists' in al-Qaeda operation

Up to 55 militants may have been killed in Pakistan's biggest ever assault against al-Qaeda targets, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said.

"Twenty foreign terrorists have been killed during the operation," Hayat told a rowdy session of parliament, where Islamist MPs vented fury at the operation and the deaths of civilians.

"When the dust settles we may find 30 to 35 more bodies."

Six bodies have already been transported to army headquarters in Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad, and are undergoing DNA tests.

At least 24 of the militants were killed on the first day of the military operation on March 16, when a paramilitary unit was routed as it sought to arrest a tribal chief wanted for harbouring al-Qaeda fugitives.

Some 7,500 army and paramilitary troops have been pounding the hideouts of an estimated 500 al-Qaeda-linked militants and their local tribal supporters in tribal areas along the mountainous Afghan border since March 18.

The fighters have put up fierce resistance, fighting back from fortified mud-walled compounds with mortars, machine guns and grenades.

At least 49 Pakistani troops have been killed or gone missing during the campaign, and at least 15 civilians, mainly women and children, have been killed in cross-fire or misfire.

Military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said 140 foreign and local militants had been arrested since the start of the operation.

"We have arrested around 140 foreign and local militants from the start of the operation till now," Sultan told AFP.

The operation is part of a concerted spring offensive by Pakistani forces in tandem with US and Afghan forces over the border.

United States-led troops are trying to block the militants' escape routes into south-east Afghanistan, where Operation Mountain Storm has been under way since March 7. British SAS troops and Arabic-speaking Jordanian troops have also been deployed this month to Afghanistan under heavy secrecy.

Islamist groups have long opposed the two-year al-Qaeda hunt, seeing it as a bid to please the US.

"Pakistan's military was not raised to attack its own tribal areas and this policy is invoking retaliation," Qazi Hussain Ahmad, who heads the country's largest Islamic party Jamaat-i-Islami, said during the house debate.

Other MPs slammed the deaths of at least 15 civilians and demanded compensation for their families.